The Orbit Drive promises an ebike transmission, built into the motor housing, that lasts for thousands of miles without maintenance, boosts efficiency and range, allows regenerative braking, and comes out lighter than most ebike drive systems.
  • @lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
    24•1 year ago

    I would totally take an ebike everywhere if I could find a place to park it where it wouldn’t get stolen.

    The ebike transmission looks interesting with low maintenance. Here’s to more of this!

    • Ben Hur Horse RaceEnglish
      11•1 year ago

      Where do you live?

      I have a very highly rated fuck off lock and insurance for a full year is around €200 here and the city is kind of known for bicycle theft and I ride it everywhere. My ebike is hard to tell that it’s an ebike, and I’m rough on my bicycles and let the paint chip etc, so it looks beat up (when I keep it in very good mechanical order)

      • @lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
        9•1 year ago

        Canada. The Greater Toronto Area … I have the Kryptonite lock, I think the Lock Picking Lawyer recommended it. I have trouble taking either my road or mountain bike with it despite the lock. Too many incidents in the past with people stealing my bike has scarred me.

        I used to have a heavy AF bike that got stolen and was rusting and all that … certain parts of the city back then you couldn’t leave anything.

    • @BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish
      9•1 year ago

      What I’ve learned from dutch people is that you need to have at least two lock to really lower the chance of getting your bike stolen.

      A solid U lock plus a frame lock should be enough to make the next bike more attractive to steal.

  • bluGill
    16•1 year ago

    There is a reason bikes normally use chains, they are very efficient. More than theory allows shaft drive and gears. Granted we are only talking a couple percent ,but chains are what most bikes use for good reason. They are old technology that still works great.

    • @dx1@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8•1 year ago

      Chains are efficient for transmitting power but this doesn’t speak to the gear ratio. Not a mechanical engineer but I have a decent understanding of this so forgive bad terminology… but if you have a huge input gear and small output gear, you get a lot of leverage to apply torque to to wheel, while you’re able to more effortlessly apply work (?) at higher speeds when it’s the other way around, that’s the basic spectrum. The individual gears emulate a continuously variable transmission, but as a step function instead of a continuous function, so there’s the space in between two consecutive gears that’s more optimal than either surrounding gear for most speeds/inclines/acceleration/etc., but inaccessible. A continuously variable transmission (on a car, bike, w/e) fills in those gaps by using actuators to change the position of a chain on conical pieces in the transmission so you have perfect efficiency in that department. It’s still a chain transmitting the actual power. Mostly it comes down to being able to control the gear ratio in a way that’s ideal for the user - cars get that part wrong a lot, resulting in some infuriating side effects. The whole reason they’ve been adding them to cars is because they help squeeze out another ~3 mpg versus a traditional manual/automatic transmission which relies on imperfect gear ratios. With some serious fallout because CVTs are pretty complex and some of them are not well designed (Hyundai/Kia comes to mind).

      • @grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        The individual gears emulate a continuously variable transmission, but as a step function instead of a discontinuous function, so there’s the space in between two consecutive gears that’s more optimal than either surrounding gear for most speeds/inclines/acceleration/etc., but inaccessible.

        Both rear cassettes and internal gear hubs these days can come with a ridiculous fuck-ton of gears (they literally go up to eleven!*). And that’s before you add a front derailleur and multiply by three! How many more ratios in between those do you need?!

        (*Or more, now. The ridiculousness has surpassed Spinal Tap!)

        • @dx1@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          I bike a lot and the traditional gear systems, while they’re pretty rock solid, easy enough to service, etc., definitely leave a little room for improvement. When you’re exerting a ton of force uphill and have to shift, for example, it can be a total disaster (especially if your derailleur stops are bad and your chain slips, which I’m dealing with this moment after a rebuild).

      • @nilloc@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        The CVTs in hybrid applications in Prius and (Toyota designed) Subaru gas electric hybrids are very different from traditional CVTs.

        There aren’t any belts or chains for changing ratios, they have a clever used of a planetary gear with the outer ring gear connected to the electric motor. This allows the output ratio to be continuously changed (which for the gas end of hybrids, allows the engine to be held at its most efficient RPM, while the vehicle speed changes as the driver wants).

        I’m not sure when it comes to pedaling cadence, that maintaining a constant speed is as helpful. Though being able to adjust that continuously would be nice-on demand.

    • Tb0n3English
      5•1 year ago

      I don’t know about the efficiency claims. Chain drive is the most efficient power transfer method we have for bicycles far and away. Changing to a shaft drive with a bunch of gears in between is not as efficient and heavier. Certainly maintenance and durability will be much better, but that’s not what they’re claiming.

  • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏English
    5•1 year ago

    Neat.

    This might be the first shaft-driven bike to actually go on sale? Companies have only been showing us prototypes of those thus far. This is probably going to be really expensive though…

    No chain!

    Edit: put image in spoiler